Is prescriptive morality rationally grounded on atheism?

In this post I am going to review a series of 7 posts over at Tough Questions Answered on the topic of whether evolution explains morality. The series critically analyzes two variants of godless morality, based on evolution: 1) optimistic humanism and 2) immanent purpose. Let’s start with part 1.

On optimistic humanism, moral values are not objective – that is, they do not exist for all times and places, independent of what humans believe. Instead, they are just arbitrary customs that emerge differently in different cultures, depending on the time and place. So, by good, optimistic humanists mean “what is in fashion here and now” and by bad, they mean “what is not in fashion here and now”.

On atheism, moral impulses are just the carry-overs from the need to cooperate in order to survive. Now, suppose we ask the question “Why should I following these arbitrary customs that limit my pleasure, if I can escape punishment?” TQA writes:

Why should a person be moral? According to optimistic humanism, it is because leading a moral life will give you personal satisfaction. Proponents of this view offer several ways of defining personal satisfaction. Atheistic philosopher Kai Nielsen says that “there can be purposes in life even if there is no purpose to life.” He speaks of each individual developing a life plan that may include career goals and social goals. Meaning can be found in “things like love, friendship, caring, knowledge, self-respect, pleasure in life.”

Nielsen says that ethics is make-em-up-as-you-go, on atheism. You choose what you like, based on pleasure. That is why today people have given up on the hard virtues, like chastity, sobriety, marital fidelity, charity, self-sacrifice and devotion to children’s well-being. Instead, morality has been reduced to recycling, environmentalism, yoga, vegetarianism, animal rights, socialist tax policies, and anti-war protests.

As prominent atheist Michael Ruse says:

The position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such an awareness of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate when someone says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory. (Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262-269).

Next, part 2 notes that optimistic humanists are not able to judge the evolved morality of other times and places. Their morality was right for them, just like our morality is right for us – it is all arbitrary on atheism. Widow-burning in India isn’t really wrong on atheism, it’s just different from what we believe in our time and place. In their time and place, it’s right for them.

Atheist Michael Ruse says this about widow-burning:

“Obviously, such a practice is totally alien to Western customs and morality. In fact, we think that widow sacrifice is totally immoral. Clearly there is nothing particularly objective about this morality, nor is it something one would expect to find the inevitable product of natural selection.” (Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262-269).

In part 3, TQA writes that moral choices and moral responsibility are impossible on atheism. On atheism, you are a computer made out of meat, and all of your outputs are fully determined by your genetic programming and sensory input.

TQA notes that:

Morality seems to require humans to possess a robust form of free will that allows them to make moral choices. We often praise good moral acts and condemn bad moral acts as if the people we are judging have some control over their actions. If there is no free will, then moral choices are completely determined by the laws of chemistry and physics, and it makes no sense to praise or criticize anyone because they are acting according to deterministic physical laws.

I would add this quote from Richard Dawkins:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Source)

In part 4, TQA writes that atheists cannot judge other people, or even God, because their atheistic morality is totally subjective and arbitrary. TQA cites the January-February 2005 edition of Humanist magazine, in which former American ambassador Carl Coon writes:

[Ethical] principles constitute a structure of interlocking behavioral guidelines that have been growing organically since our ancestors first became human, if not earlier. These standards and principles didn’t descend to us from on high as some revealed truth from an intelligent being greater than ourselves. We worked them out through a long and arduous evolutionary process marked by many wrong turns and much social discord. Indeed, the structure is still imperfect and we continue trying to make improvements.

Then TQA exposes how all of this language is logically self-contradictory:

…notice the words he employs to describe morality: wrong turns, discord, imperfect, and improvements. All of these words indicate that morality, over time, has been moving in a direction from worse to better, from bad to good, from imperfect to perfect. But how is it possible for the ambassador to judge the morality of the distant past if all morals are relative? How can he say that morality has taken “wrong turns”? How do we know ethics are improving over time if no two time periods can be compared?

TQA goes on to define the immanent purpose view, (our survival is objectively good), in part 5. They critique it in part 6 and part 7. Here are some of their responses to this view:

no explanation of the origin of the value of human survival

evolution doesn’t justify compassion on the weak and unfit

no reason why individuals should conform their behavior to past observed behavior

Below are five good debates in which atheists try to answer the question: “on atheism, why is it rational for me to to do the right thing, especially when I feel less pleasure, and when I will not be punished if I do the wrong thing?”. There is no reason to be moral on atheism. And that is why atheism killed 100 million people in the 20th century alone. Atheists who do act morally are acting inconsistently and irrationally.

I wouldn’t say that atheists pick their morality willy-nilly. There is a sort of accumulation of knowledge. If someone said I’m going to burn my wife at the stake so that rain will fall and a drought will end, the atheist would point out that rain falls for physical reasons and it is not necessary to appease a God.

Contemporary humanism takes its values based on arguments of what seems logical and self-evident at the time. As new information–like the possibility that other mammals may be conscious, given the similiarities of their brains to ours–those values become modified over time.

They are not arbitrary or self-seeking, but an attempt to maximize the “utility” of society as a whole.

TransparentEye, thank you for your insightful comment. My readers should know that TransparentEye makes the best case for non-theistic morality that I know of. Let me try to respond the best I can to your points.

First, your example of the corrected beliefs about rain and wife-killing begs the question. The thing to be explained is why “taking the life of an innocent person is wrong”. Correcting the misconception of how nature works is irrelevant to the moral issue.

Second, you are correct in saying that the moral fashions of the day are not selected willy-nilly. On atheism, they are the result of social practices learned during evolution. Also, philosophy, religion and other disciplines inform the standards. The point is Rick, that this standard is completely arbitrary. It varies by time and place, as do the fashions of clothing in various societies at different times and places.

Third, in an accidental universe, all you will ever have are descriptions of observed behavior patterns. You will never be able to derive a moral ought from descriptions of behaviors. Every time you smuggle in a concept of what has moral value, like utility, pain-avoidance or survival, you have argued for something that is inconsistent with atheism.

Why is utility good on atheism? Why is the survival of humans good on atheism? Why is avoiding pain good? It will always come down to subjective satisfaction. That is not what morality is – that’s just self-interest! You will not be able to prescribe “good” behaviors to consistent atheists like Stalin, because it is in his self-interest to do pursue what gives him pleasure. He does not care about utility, the survival of the species or the pain-avoidance of others.

Here’s what you need to do to win this argument. You need to explain why it is rational for a person to freely choose to sacrifice his own life to save a stranger’s life. On Christianity, it is rational, because humans have objective value. We follow moral laws because those laws are designed for our eudaimonia. Also we have Jesus’ example of self-sacrifice, and the knowledge that if we trust him and follow him, then we will be raised from the dead.

Thanks again for your comment, and please, stop by any time. As you know, the rules are that you get the next reply, and the last word. So give me hell, because I can’t rebut you! By the way, thanks again for watching the Craig-Stenger debate I sent you for your Christmas present.